The Trump administration's effort to resettle white South Africans through a dedicated refugee pathway has run into an unexpected obstacle: relatively few Afrikaners are applying, even though the program offers a direct route to the United States.

According to an internal proposal obtained by The Guardian, State Department officials are considering spending about $335,000 on research and advertising to understand the shortfall and promote the program.

The proposal states that applications from Afrikaners have "trended lower than expected" since the administration launched an online registration system in November 2025. Officials acknowledge they do not know what is deterring prospective applicants.

"There's currently little research about why Afrikaners are not applying to request referral into the US Refugee Admissions Program," the proposal reads. Referral into that program is the entry point for resettlement, after which applicants undergo US government vetting before being admitted to the country.

The proposed research and advertising campaign would unfold in three stages. The first involves organizing focus groups in several South African communities, including Pretoria, Stellenbosch, and Orania, the Afrikaner-only settlement in South Africa's Northern Cape founded in 1991 that has drawn headlines as the nation's "White Only" community. The second would be a survey of 1,000 Afrikaners, testing which messages might persuade them to migrate. The final phase would be a six-month online advertising campaign, conducted primarily in Afrikaans, aimed at encouraging people to immigrate.

The plan remains a proposal and has not been approved. Approval would clear the way for the focus groups, the survey, and the advertising campaign to go forward.

In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order placing the resettlement of Afrikaners at the top of his agenda, on the grounds that white South Africans are being subjected to unfair property seizures and racial discrimination. The administration has also been vocal in promoting claims of a "white genocide," assertions that experts have widely discredited and that the South African government has denied outright.

South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola rejected the genocide allegations, invoking the phrase favored by Trump. "The story of white genocide does not exist, it's fake news," Lamola said during a discussion in New York, adding that there is no evidence to back the White House's claims.

The Afrikaner program took shape alongside a broader overhaul of US refugee policy. Trump drastically cut the refugee admission cap set under President Joe Biden from 125,000 to 7,500, then eventually raised it to 17,000 with Afrikaners in mind — the annual ceiling the US president sets for refugee admissions. According to figures cited by The Guardian, the United States admitted 16,292 refugees in the fiscal year ending September 30, with nearly all of them South African — a figure just short of the 17,000 ceiling. That total, however, has not eased officials' disappointment with how many people are seeking to enter the program.

A State Department spokesperson defended the administration's approach in a statement: "We continue to process and admit as refugees Afrikaners in South Africa who are escaping the threat of government-sponsored race-based discrimination."

"President Trump has been very clear that we are prioritizing the resettlement of Afriers in South Africa who are escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination."

Trump has had a difficult relationship with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Last year, during a White House visit, Trump presented Ramaphosa with what he described as evidence of the mass killing of white South Africans, displaying pictures of burial sites that in fact showed humanitarian workers lifting body bags in Goma, Congo.